Some new amendment I missed about occupying other countries by force?

You missed 200-odd years of precedent and several laws and Supreme Court affirmation of those laws.

OK so no. Why is it so hard for you people, 'no'.

"You people" are all alike.

Pentagon: Gitmo prisoner releases not fail safe
By ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The re-emergence of two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners as al-Qaida terrorists in the past week won't likely change U.S. policy on transfers to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said Monday.

More than 100 Saudis have been repatriated from the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, where the government puts them through a rehabilitation program designed to encourage them to abandon Islamic extremism and reintegrate into civilian life.

The online boasts by two of these men that they have joined al-Qaida in Yemen underscore that the Saudi system isn't fail safe, the Pentagon said. A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington confirmed the men had been Guantanamo detainees. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose that fact on the record.

Another two or three Saudis who had been transferred from Guantanamo cannot be located by the Saudi government, said Christopher Boucek, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. sees the Saudi program as admirable.

"The best you can do is work with partner nations in the international community to ensure that they take the steps to mitigate the threat ex-detainees pose," he said. "There are never any absolute guarantees. There's an inherent risk in all detainee transfers and releases from Guantanamo."

The deprogramming effort — built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists — is part of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured hundreds of Saudis to join the Iraq insurgency. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, were Saudis, as is the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden.

A total of 218 men, including former Guantanamo detainees, have gone through the reintegration program, according to the Saudi Ministry of Interior. Nine were later arrested again, an "official source" at the ministry said in a dispatch from the official Saudi Press Agency. The report said some of the nine were former detainees, but did not give a breakdown.

The Saudi Interior Ministry official said most of the graduates "resumed their natural lives and some of them voluntarily contributed to the activities of this program to help others return to natural life."

Frank Ciluffo, a researcher on security issues at George Washington University, said a program that doesn't work all the time is better than none because the alternative is an extended prison sentence, which only further radicalizes a person.

"I think that just fuels and gives legitimate grievances to the adversary which stick," Ciluffo said. He said Singapore, Indonesia and Yemen have programs too, but Yemen's was suspended for lack of funds.

The two men who went through the Saudi rehabilitation program and resurfaced in Yemen were seen in video clips posted on the Internet last week.

One man gave his name as Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, whose prisoner number when he was held by the U.S. was 333.

According to documents released last year, the detainee claimed he was twice beaten by Americans, after he was captured in Pakistan in 2001 and was being flown to Afghanistan, and again after he landed at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan.

The other former detainee said their detention by U.S. forces only hardened them.

"By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for," said Said Ali al-Shihri, whose prisoner number was 372.

The interior ministry official said the two former detainees have made things more difficult for Saudis who remain at Guantanamo. Those who join extremist causes after they are released "reduce the chance of the return of the rest of the detainees whose families are waiting for them and (are) looking forward to their return home," the official said, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

About 22 Saudis are among the 145 men still locked up at Guantanamo, according to a study by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. The largest group of remaining prisoners is from Yemen.

More than 500 men have been freed from Guantanamo. Gordon said a total of 62 are "confirmed or suspected" of involvement in "terrorist activities." The Pentagon has not identified these former detainees, and has not said how it defines terrorist activities, other than excluding actions like engaging in propaganda.

"The names and identities of these former detainees will not be released at this time, due to the need to protect our sources and methods of gathering this information," Gordon said.

DunnoYou are jumping to the conclusion that he has no other reason for closing the prison.

Closing the "camp" is a promise kept. Unlike some other campaigns promises:

From the stump speeches of the 2000 presidential campaign

- to restore honor and dignity to the White House.

- to restore civility to the poisonous atmosphere of the nation's capital. "it's time to clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C."

- an administration would "ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves."

- “The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the [Clinton] administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries.”

- “Today, gas prices have skyrocketed, and oil imports are at all-time highs….By any reasonable standard, the Department of Energy has utterly failed in its mission to safeguard America’s energy security. “

- “Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness. When it comes to military health, the administration is not providing an adequate military health care system.”

-“The current administration has casually sent American armed forces on dozens of missions without clear goals, realizable objectives, favorable rules of engagement, or defined exit strategies.”

- “Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments. A Republican administration working with the Congress will respect the needs and quiet sacrifices of these public servants as it strengthens America’s intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities”

MTI, it's time to let it go. Lest somebody later pick-up all the petards left about from this election and hoist them for the next one.

Put another way, why stop with just the most recent administration? It goes on and on down through time. I'll bet George Washington promised "no political parties!"

I suppose that when a campaign promise is "kept" it can cause a great deal of surprise to those not expecting such.

If that's his way of keeping a promise I hope he breaks the rest, I hope he spares us in CONUS and moves the new camp to Hawaii.

Yes. He's not stated any other reason so I see no reason to believe he has any other.

- Peter.

__________________
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1971 108 280S

I doubt that is true.

I know I am going to catch h3ll for this, but here is DL on Gitmo.
He has valid points.
January 26, 2009

New Column: Gitmo Questions for Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

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During his first week in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year. Later communications from his office disclose that he hasn't yet fully explored the potentially negative consequences of closing the facility. The problem, he said, is more complicated than it first appeared. This raises a number of questions, Mr. Gibbs:

--How can President Obama credibly maintain that the issue is more complicated than he thought, when people have been raising these problems for years? Is he just now discovering that there are serious consequences involved, or did he already know and finesse the issue during the campaign for political purposes? If he didn't know (and even more so if he did know), doesn't he owe former President George W. Bush an apology for his unfair criticisms? Doesn't he owe the American people an explanation as to how he could possibly have been unaware of such rudimentary aspects of this fundamentally important national security issue?

--Given that he now concedes there are unexplored complications, wasn't it precipitous and imprudent of him to issue the closure order? What if further research indicates there are no reasonable alternatives other than to bring these prisoners to the U.S. mainland and grant them the full panoply of constitutional rights? Or does he actually favor full-blown constitutional rights for terrorists? If so, will he not be leading America back to its pre-Sept. 11, 2001, mindset, which treated terrorism as a law enforcement matter rather than a military one?

--Democratic Rep. John Murtha praised the Gitmo closure order as a "first key step in restoring America's image and credibility in the world." Murtha said, "The problem with Guantanamo was never about its bricks and mortar … (but) that its very existence stains and defies the moral fiber of our great nation." Based on the president's repeated statements, it's obvious that he essentially agrees with Murtha that the primary problem Gitmo poses is its effect on America's image in the international community. That being the case, why won't the president's simultaneous executive order banning "torture" rectify this supposed image problem, thereby allowing us to preserve the facility and avoid these complicated issues concerning its closure? After all, if, as Murtha says, it's not about the bricks and mortar, then why don't we keep using the same bricks and mortar and handle our image problem with clear publications of the president's orders forbidding enhanced interrogation techniques? Isn't the honest answer that the president is more worried about his image with his hard-core anti-war base than America's image internationally? But if I'm wrong and his overriding concern truly is with international opinion, then could you please explain why he and other Democrats are constantly exaggerating and mischaracterizing the alleged incidents of abuse? We know there were only three cases in which waterboarding was used. Also, if America's image is the problem, why does Mr. Obama continue to sanction the charge that the Bush administration was behind the regrettable incidents at Abu Ghraib, when the evidence indicates it did not authorize them and swiftly punished those who were culpable? Wouldn't it better serve America's international image if the Obama administration made clear to other nations that these were renegade acts never authorized by the Bush administration? Or would the damage to the president's image with the fringe left from such a clarification be a price he's unwilling to pay, even if it would serve his stated goal of repairing America's image?

--What if the president's further study reveals that our national security strongly militates in favor of keeping Gitmo open? Is the president prepared to say he is more concerned with America's image than its safety?

--In that the president has decided, categorically, to forbid whatever he believes constitutes "torture," could you please explain to the American people what alternative techniques he might implement that are reasonably designed to extract lifesaving information from terrorists? We do know, do we not, that information gleaned through these controversial techniques prevented real attacks and saved real lives? If the president is aware of no effective alternative techniques, will he tell the American people that he'd rather terrorist attacks occur and American lives be lost than debatable techniques be imposed? With all due respect, it is not a sufficient answer to say that in theory, enhanced interrogation techniques don't work, because we know that in reality, they do -- and did.

--Now, could we please turn to the question of abortion and consider how President Obama's controversial executive order will fulfill his campaign promise to bring America together?


Posted by David Limbaugh at January 26, 2009 07:33 PM

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Gee, perhaps part of the problem might be that Obama's team has not had access to the classified nature of the "case files" for each prisoner. Maybe that's why he wasn't aware of the scope of the problem. I suppose he should have realized that the Bush administration never even pretended to act in accordance with the law with respect to Gitmo detainees and therefore wouldn't maintain case files on the prisoners.

The Limbaugh brothers are a real pair.

The captives at Guantanamo aren't super-villians like Lex Luther or Magneto, so all this hang wringing about them being on "US soil" is pure hyperbole. Or are we admitting that the mainland lacks the facilities to house inmates?